[Dr. Rosenow] was adept at ... reproducing the clinical
syndromes
of the patients in animals. ... the resemblance of syndromes
[was] often unbelievable and at times almost ludicrous ...
he
prepared autogenous vaccines that worked miracles in
innumerable
patients.

Pierce's 1915 glowing assessment of Dr. Edward C. Rosenow
(then
age 40) was by no means an isolated view. By this time Dr.
Rosenow was generally regarded in prominent medical circles
as
among the most brilliant of modern scientists. From this
already-lofty positon, he went on to serve as head of
experimental bacteriology for the Mayo Foundation for nearly
three decades, from 1915 to 1944.

Dr. Rosenow's consistent and well-documented published
works,
nearly 300 articles spanning the period from 1902 through
1958,
built upon two venerable medical concepts: (a) the concept
of
oral focal infection, whereby distant and/or generalized
diseases
have been attributed to the dissemination of microorganisms
or
their toxins through the bloodstream from an oral "focus" or
reservoir; and (b) the ability or perhaps even tendency of
microorganisms to exist in different phases as a result of
dissociation or mutation, depending on environmental
conditions. Dr. Rosenow's
investigations consistently demonstrated the presence of
specifically virulent nonhemolytic streptococci within the
oral
focus, primarily in or around teeth and/or tonsils (often
without visible symptoms of infection) [*3]; these organisms or their
derivatives were directly and clearly implicated in a wide
range of diseases
[*4] - from
arthritis to schizophrenia, and even including disease
of "blood-
building tissues" [*5] The key
to
the success of Dr. Rosenow's investigations was the use of a
laboriously-developed methodology that most significantly
correctly mimmicked conditions existing within the human
body,
particularly involving a range of oxygen supply, rather than
the
customary reliance on strictly "anaerobic" (zero oxygen) or
"aerobic" (as in the air) conditions.

The manner in which Dr. Rosenow integrated and refined these
concepts into an understanding of a wide range of diseases
may
even come to be recognized as the high point of 20th century
medicine, although his legacy is currently obscure or even
maligned. Surprisingly, this has occurred despite the
association of Dr. Rosenow with some of the most prominent
names
in American medical history. Early in his career, Dr.
Rosenow
worked closely with Frank Billings and Charles H. Mayo, both
former AMA Presidents and staunch advocates of the concept
of
oral focal infection as a key factor in systemic disease.
And
another former AMA President, Walter Bierring, predicted in
1938,
"perchance it is safe to assume that the 'Rosenow heresy'
may yet
become the medical guide of the future". [*6] Moreover, some 38 of Dr.
Rosenow's own published articles appeared in the
authoritative
Journal of the American Medical Association.

(Even before Dr. Rosenow was born, an earlier AMA president,
Austin Flint, had noted in 1868 that caries of the teeth are
at
least an occasional cause of trigeminal neuralgia
[*7] - which same condition has
recently been discussed as associated with cavitations in
bone
from which devitalized teeth have been removed. [*8]

As to why Dr. Rosenow's work has faded from the medical
limelight, this in so small part seems attributable to a
clearly
fraudulent misrepresentation of his research results
[*9] by W. Holman in 1928
[*10]. Over the next couple of
decades, Holman's (incorrect) 1928
protrayal came to serve as the indispensable foundational
citation for a body of incestuously cross-referenced
literature
[*11] which confronted Dr.
Rosenow's
otherwise unassailable work. This body of contrary
literature
continues to underly and influence modern medical and dental
attitudes, theory and practice,
establishing Holman's deception as probably the grandest
fraud in the history of
medicine, if not science.

Nonetheless, the concepts of focal infection [*12], mutation [*13] and dissociation [*14], and the use of reduced
oxygen
gradients [*15] are separately
being
promoted in modern medical research, providing measures of
independent validation of the foundations of Dr. Rosenow's
prior,
integrated studies and methodology.

Dr. Rosenow emphasized two primary points relative to the
therapy
of a wide-range of diseases:

(a) Removal of the oral focus. [*3]
Dr. Rosenow demonstrated that the oral focus, usually in or
around diseased or non-vital teeth [*4,*16]
and/or (secondarily) tonsils [*17]
is the primary site of
replication and dissemination, and even for the acquisition
of
their specificity and strength [*18].
But he and others have
cautioned that removal of the focus cannot be expected to
always
result in a cure, insofar as a secondary infection elsewhere
in
the body may have already become sufficiently established so
as
to be able to sustain the infective process even in the
absence
of the primary (oral) focus; and

(b) Administration of specific therapeutic antigen (vaccine)
or
antibody, or both, preferably autogenous (generated from
organisms taken from the patient). [*19]In
some of his later articles,
Dr. Rosenow set forth a therapeutical regimen discussing
only the
administration of antigen and antibody without specific
reference
to oral foci; however, it was noted that this therapy would
need
to be continued indefinitely, presumably due to the
continued
presence of foci (reservoirs) of infection. Thus the
importance
of their removal in conjunction with vaccine-therapy [*3], as had been consistently
and
strongly emphasized by Dr. Rosenow, would appear to continue
to
warrant primary consideration.

Dr. Rosenow's instructions relating to the isolation,
cultivation
and preservation, respectively, of properly-specific
pathogenic
organisms (streptococci) incorporate three essential
technical
components: use of serial dilutions [*20],
oxygen gradients [*21], and
glycerol-salt menstruum [*3].
These components and and other
details of Dr. Rosenow's instructions for production of vaccine and antibody
require close attention, insofar as strict compliance
consistently achieved favorable results (whereas failures
invariably have been associated with and apparently
attributable
to non-compilance).

Further major implications of the foregoing on some popular
modern medical perspectives include characterization of the
concept of "animal models" as intrinsically flawed, as
evident in
its being at variance with the venerable Koch-Henle
postulates of
disease causation; reaffirmation of the validity of the
Koch-
Henle
tradition; the essential complementarian compatibility of
the
Rosenow perspective with modern emphases on genetics, and
exposure of the concept of "autoimmune disease" as fictional
and
superfluous.

- Animal Models. Nowadays, much fanfare accompanies the
discovery of new "animal models" in which diseases that
resemble
those in man can be induced and studied. These "models" by
definition do not involve the identical disease processes,
but
rather processes which mimic the real ones. In light of Dr.
Rosenow's work, it would appear that the failure of modern
practitioners to replicate many human diseases in laboratory
animals simply indicates that they have the wrong organism,
or a
wrong or degenerative phase of the correct one. In contrast,
Dr.
Rosenow marvelled at how similar were the tissues of persons
and
animals. He readily replicated a wide range of disease
conditions in laboratory animals
using bacteria
from patients suffering from these same diseases.

- Koch-Henle postulates of disease. Insofar as the
Koch-Henle
postulates require replication of diseases in laboratory
animals
with the suspected disease-causing agent, a revival of Dr.
Rosenow's methodology brings with it a reaffirmation of
these
venerable postulates. Moreover, Dr. Rosenow's work went far
beyond merely fulfilling the venerable Koch-Henle postulates. [*5]

- The relative role of genetics. Modern perspectives
generally
recognize that the genetic factor is essentially a
predisposition
and does not itself cause disease, but that some undisclosed
environmental factor triggers the actual onset of disease.
Similarly, Dr. Rosenow discussed both onset and identity of
disease conditions as attributable to a combination of (a)
infection by microorganisms and (b) "constitutional" or
inherited
predisposition. Thus, Dr. Rosenow's successful therapeutic
regimens would at a minimum be expected to be complementary
to
gene therapy, and particularly attractive in light of the
acknowledged general failure of gene therapy thus far [*22] to produce beneficial
results.

- The concept of "autoimmune disease". In the second half of
the
20th century (coincident with Dr. Rosenow's residence in
semi-
obscurity), "autoimmune" processes were proposed to be
causing
many disease conditions for which a foreign cause presumably
could not be identified; however, it has since been
generally
recognized that this so-called "autoimmune reaction" may be
a
result and not the cause of a diseased state [*23], and that the onset of
"autoimmune disease" may be "triggered by unknown
environmental
factors acting on a predisposing genetic background" [*24]. In that Dr. Rosenow's
successful methodology consistently enabled identification
of
specific microbial pathogens in these same conditions, the
very
need for an "autoimmune disease" concept may well be
questioned.

- Beyond considerations of "normal" diseases, such as
appendicitis, arthritis, asthma, etc., it is noted that Dr.
Rosenow's scope encompassed numerous other conditions
including
alcoholism, infertility, mental illness and even violent
criminality; and he long ago had anticipated (and solved in
advance) the contemporary dilemna of "post-polio syndrome" [*25]. He also probed far-ranging
disease-related topics such as the role of radiant energy in
seasonality of various diseases and epidemics
[*26].

Overall, Dr. Rosenow's monumental body of work appears to
have
much to offer in relation to attaining an understanding of
cause,
prevention and therapy of a wide range of human disease
conditions. The broad scope and immediate specific impact of
Dr.
Rosenow's work argue for its priority re-integration into
modern
medical and dental education and practice.

###

This article is an electronic preprint of a paper to be
proposed
to the Journal of Infectious Disease, in which journal Dr.
Rosenow published some 53 articles spanning the period
1904-1945.

Postscript: Insofar as Dr. Rosenow has demonstrated that the
causative agent for a wide range of diseases is disseminated
through the bloodstream [*21, *27],
the use of autohemotherapy is
suggested for
consideration as a temporary therapeutic expedient, pending
the
development and general availability of Dr. Rosenow's
specific
vaccines. It is further noted that numerous
disease
conditions
have been addressed in the historical literature of both
autohemotherapy and Dr. Rosenow
[*28].